⇒Maureen Dowd discovered chick lit, and she really, really hated it, in that superficial way she has of hating things. Chick lit writers found her vapid, not to mention lazy, late, and lackluster.

⇒The total lack of realism in For Better or Worse when it came to selling your first novel was so annoying. (It wasn't any better in the fall, either.)

⇒"We're still a $10 billion-plus industry!" is how I summed up the 2006 book sales. And, thanks to J.K. Rowling and The Secret, we'll probably do it again this year, too.

⇒The Newbery Medal-winning novel The Higher Power of Lucky had the word "scrotum" in it, and children's librarians across America freaked out.

⇒James Bernard Frost hated the cover St. Martin's gave his novel, World Leader Pretend, so much he commissioned a new one himself.

⇒Jonathan Lethem, on the other hand, had no problems with the cover Doubleday put on You Don't Love Me Yet. Heck, he supplied the photo.